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Washington. World governments and aid agencies spent the past 24 hours readying emergency rescue teams and supplies for Haiti in a massive relief effort mobilized after a 7.0 earthquake on Tuesday that may have killed thousands.

The European Union activated its crisis-management system and the Red Cross and United Nations unlocked emergency funds and supplies as the destitute Caribbean nation battled to assess the scale of the destruction.

“The priority is to find survivors,” said Elisabeth Byrs, a spokeswoman for the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“We are working against the clock,” she said from Geneva as the United Nations mobilized some 37 search-and-rescue teams from a global network.

Regional countries were among the first to offer help. Venezuela sent a 50-member team with food and medical supplies. The Dominican Republic readied a plane to pick up victims and sniffer dogs to search the rubble.

The United States stood “ready to assist,” said President Barack Obama, who was due later on Wednesday to announce “an aggressive, coordinated effort” from his government, a US official said.

Mexico, which suffered a massive earthquake in 1985 that killed some 10,000 people, planned to send doctors, search-and-rescue dogs, and infrastructure-damage experts .

Italy said it was sending a C-130 cargo plane with a field hospital and emergency medical personnel as well as a team to assess aid needs. France said 65 clearing specialists, with six sniffer dogs, and two doctors and two nurses were leaving.

Humanitarian officials said the proximity of the quake’s epicenter, only 15 kilometers from the capital Port-au-Prince, and Haiti’s crumbling infrastructure meant it was impossible to gauge how many people might be dead or wounded.

“There’s probably three million people potentially affected,’’ said Paul Conneally, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, basing the estimate on Haiti’s population of 10 million and previous Red Cross experience in earthquake relief.

“Port-au-Prince has been massively impacted,’’ he said. “There are many, many people trapped in the rubble.’’

There was still no tally of how many had been killed, but as rescue workers struggled to reach survivors, thousands of people were believed to be dead, the Haitian president, René Preval, told the Miami Herald.

USGS geophysicist Kristin Marano said the quake struck at 4:53 p.m. on Tuesday at a depth of only eight kilometers, was the strongest earthquake since 1770 in what is now Haiti.

The Netherlands immediately released two million euros ($2.9 million) in aid and said it was looking into the possibility of sending rescue teams.

“The gravity of the situation seems to be like that in Southeast Asia after the tsunami in 2004,” Cooperation and Development Minister Bert Koenders said.

Germany offered one million euros in immediate humanitarian aid and a host of other countries said they were also prepared to send help.



AP, AFP